Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P

[EarDemon]

http://www.engadget.com/2015/09/29/lg-is-making-another-nexus-meet-the-nexus-5x/

http://www.engadget.com/2015/09/29/google-nexus-6p-announced-specs-pricing-release-date/

https://store.google.com/category/phones


All I can say is the 6P is WOW!

I've been looking at replacing my almost 2 year old HTC One Max for a while now, and have come up empty with what I'd like to replace it with. I've always had higher end phones, usually from HTC, this is the longest that I've ever owned a smartphone, but they are a dying company and don't seem to be interested in releasing premium products anymore.

I'm not interested in Samsung phones, HTC is dying, never cared for LG anything, Sony doesn't release many mobile products in the US, Motorola doesn't seem to be in high end market. I would have never guessed I'd be highly considering a Huawei. 5.7" screen at 1440p, the powerful Snapdragon 810 v2.1 processor, that isn't plagued by over heating, 3450 mAh battery, the new USB C connector, 3GB of RAM, front facing speakers. I'm a little disappointed in no removable storage, but I could probably live with 64 GB for $50 over the base price. After having no external storage on my Droid DNA, I swore that was it, As long as it it compatible with Sprint's Spark triband network, I think I'm sold. It will be my first Nexus device

 

[TheKrell]

Would you call those phablets? I personally don't want a phone that big.

 

[EarDemon]

I’ll take as big and as massive as I can get. Screen size has always been a factor, and was a big factor when leaving the dungeon of Apple. Here are all of the smart phones I owned over time.

2009 – Apple iPhone 3G 3.5”
2010 – Apple iPhone 3GS 3.5”
2010 – HTC Evo 4.3”
2011 – HTC Evo 3D 4.3”
2012 – HTC Evo LTE 4.7”
2012 – Motorola Droid HD Maxx 4.7”
2013 – HTC Droid DNA 5.0”
2013 – HTC One Max 5.9”

If I get the Nexus 6P, it will be strange to go down in size, even it’s only by 1/5th of an inch. A smartphone is a tool not a toy. It’s bad enough doing RDP/VNC on my almost 6” screen, couldn’t imagine doing it on anything smaller. I don’t like small and compact electronics. I can’t stand these ultrabooks and thin, lightweight and frail laptops. Give me a 10lb monster with a 17”+ screen. Don’t want no tiny tablet. 10” is the bare minimum I would accept.

 

[dishdude]

I'm glad to see they kept a larger screen phone like that Nexus 6, I was worried the next generation might be only something like the 5x. Interesting they chose Huawei as the manufacturer, it'll be interesting to see what the quality is like - my guess is it should be pretty good.

 

[Rey]

My Nexus 6p arrives today. I currently have a Sprint Note 4 but many ex Note users tell me I'll be happier with this phone. I'll also be trying out Project FI to see if it's much better than being on Sprint alone.

 

[EarDemon]

Please post your likes/dislikes

I've been so close to pulling the trigger on the 64 GB 6P, the one thing that is holding me back is the on-screen buttons. What's the point of a 5.7" display, when the buttons take up part of the screen real estate. I'll take capacitive buttons any day, and it's one of the reasons why I've been sticking with HTC and why I only had the Motorola phone for about six months.

 

[Rey]

I'll definitely post more about it. Hasn't been a week yet and I already ditched my beloved Note 4. I also thought the same about the capacitive buttons and losing some screen space, but honestly you rarely notice them. They also auto hide while watching videos,pictures and in some apps. I don't even notice them when they are on there.

Finally a nexus phone that meets my expectations. Pure android is such a smooth experience. I tried to replicate this experience on the Note 4 with CM12.1 but there were always too many bugs, especially with LTE.

 

[EarDemon]

Good to know. I guess that might not be so bad if they auto hide.

 

[EarDemon]

I'm waiting to see if Google will have any Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales for the Nexus 6P after seeing this:
http://www.technobuffalo.com/2015/11/25/google-nexus-black-friday/

If they don't, I'll order it on Tuesday, and it looks like I'll be getting it from Huawei directly. They don't charge sales tax in NY, Google does. That's an almost $45 savings right there.

 

[EarDemon]

Pulled the trigger today. Ordered the phone directly from Huawei. With the money I saved by not paying Uncle Andrew, I ordered the Speck CandyShell ruggedized case from Google yesterday during their half off sale and got some screen protectors from Amazon as well. I'm Gazelle'ing my One Max and opted for the Amazon gift card for the extra 5%. As soon as I get that I'll buy a USB C car charger and an extra charger to have at work. Having to only use one type of charger for my phone, watch, mobile hotspot and work tablet is so convenient. Hopefully everything I get from here on out will be type C.

 

[EarDemon]

The 6P and case came yesterday, screen protector came today. I am real anal about micro scratches on my electronics so I did the impossible and kept the Nexus boxed until the mail came today and I got my screen protectors. As soon as I put the screen protector on, I drove to the Sprint Store to get a SIM card for it. It was a pretty painless process, except for the 45 minute wait because the store had two employees working the front.

CONS:
- While only .2" smaller then my One Max, the Nexus feels much much smaller than that. It's going to take me a long time to get used to the smaller size. Can't say I care for it. At the Sprint Store I was playing with the original Nexus 6. That's the size this phone should be.
- The on screen buttons are frustrating.
- The lack of a supported Visual Voice Mail app is something I didn't realize until just now Googling it. I feel like I'm going back 10 years having to check mail the old fashion way.
- Not a fan of the Google search bar on the top of every home screen.
- I HATE having my Top 4 Most used apps at the top of the app drawer.
- Do not like the way Folders appear. I like the HTC style much better, where you can see icons of at least 4 apps that are in a folder. I refuse to use Folders now.

PROS:
- Very fast. The Microsoft Office apps especially always took a longer time to install on my One Max, they were lightning quick on the 6P.
- Battery life is phenomenal. I've been playing with it almost non stop and setting up everything I can think of from about 1PM until now and battery life is at 37%.
- Not sure if it's because of an update to the app itself or because of Marshmallow, but the Microsoft Outlook app is now usable for me. I've been using it on my old phone since it was in beta until about 2 months ago and had tons of problems with it.
- I love using the fingerprint scanner wake the phone up and unlock it in one step. Initially I wasn't fond of not having different wallpaper on the lock screen, but it's not really an issue since I will very rarely see the lock screen.
- Screen quality is amazing. I've always like AMOLED screens, but Samsung's screens have been so over saturated and unrealistic looking to me the past few years it was a turn off, but this is perfect, and at 1440P the clarity is wonderful.

MISC:
- I have not played with the camera or shooting video yet
- Front facing speakers are awesome, so I am so glad I did not lose this from the One Max. The Nexus 6P sounds slightly better then the One Max to me. Seems like better stereo separation.
- I miss the HTC Sense Weather Clock
- I can't believe showing the battery level % in the Status Bar requires a third party app

One big difference, this is the last speed test I took with the One Max, and the first I took with the Nexus. I was standing in the exact same spot.

HTC One Max:

Nexus 6P:

 

[Rey]

Voicemail:

When you open your dialer, you don't see all the way to the right an icon for voicemail?

Battery percentage:

Pull down the quick settings menu. Press and leave your finger pressed on the settings icon for 3 seconds and release. You'll get a pop up asking you to enable system ui tuner. Hit yes and head onto the settings menu. At the bottom you'll find the system ui tuner menu. Enter, then enable " Show embedded battery percentage"

Google search bar:

Try using a launcher like Nova Launcher. Been using it for years and still prefer it over the rest. Here you can get rid of the search bar.

 

[EarDemon]

Thanks a lot for mentioning the System UI Tuner. I had no idea about that, my battery % in now showing. That is awesome!

I've tried Nova Launcher in the past multiple times and always went back to the HTC Sense launcher, last night I tried 4 or 5 different launchers and found Nova was the best of the bunch. The Microsoft one was one of the worst experiences I've ever had on a phone. I'm currently using Nova, but I still like Sense the best. No more Search bar, no more frequently used apps on the main app screen. I absolutely cannot stand anything the has a dedicated 'Most Frequent' section, a 'Favorites' function or anything of the like. It's just a waste of space, show me everything. I see the Dialer app has that, and it don't like that it appears it can't be removed. On the HTC dialer, you could remove sections that you had no use for.

Here is my Dialer, no Voice Mail Button unless you count the #1 which dials your own phone number old school style. From what I read, Visual Voice Mail is only supported if you have Google Fi or T-Mobile. On XDA I found the apk's for three different versions of the typical Sprint Visual Voice mail app, and I could not get them to work.

I'm finding more and more frustration.


- I can't figure out how to share out photos and video to my TV. On the One Max it was simple, just press the 3 vertical dot button when in a media app and the option was there to send to my TV or AV Receiver.

- The HTC Music Player app displayed song lyrics karaoke style. MusixMatch seems to be the most recommended app for that, but I find using it annoying as all hell and the lyrics have been at least one, usually two lines behind the song. Why does it require to my Google+ account? The HTC app didn't require that.

- I see there's no real Gallery app, just that dumb Google Photos app that used to bug me on my previous phones to upload my photos to their cloud service. I want to sync NOTHING with ANYTHING. I want nothing stored on a remote server. If I lose all my pictures, oh well. They aren't that important to me, and I keep my own periodic back up on a flash drive. I also don't want my pictures sorted by date, or location, or whatever. I just want one big scrollable grid of pictures that I can tap to make full screen, that's it.

- Need to find some good toggle widgets to enable/disable cellular data, wifi, bluetooth, airplane mode and whatnot. The controls in the Notification Pull Down are hard for me to get used to.

- Taking screen shots I also find more trouble that it should be. I tried about a dozen times to get one without the volume bar in the shot and finally gave up. How dumb. Why can't it be Power + Home like almost every other phone. At least that experience forced me to look up how to disable the double tap on the power button to launch the camera app. Another feature I am happy to give up, and I'm thrilled I'm even allowed to.

I can't stand this whole vanilla Android 'experience'. I cannot believe how much I relied on features from HTC, and how much HTC Sense (sans Blinkfeed) is an improvement over boring Android. I guess I never had to think about it until now. I should have remembered back when I used to root and ROM my old Evo and Evo 3D, and remembered not just how much these custom ROMs break stock features but how much I missed the HTC stuff.

 

[yourbeliefs]

If you own the 5X or 6P (or any other Nexus device with NFC) you can get $20 in credit from Best Buy by using Android Pay anywhere between now and the end of the year.

http://www.androidcentral.com/you-can-score-20-best-buy-e-gift-card-using-android-pay-december-31

 

[EarDemon]

Both the 5X and 6P are $50 off from Google's Store.

LG Nexus 5X 16 GB - $329
LG Nexus 5X 32 GB - $379

Huawei Nexus 6P 32 GB - $449
Huawei Nexus 6P 64 GB - $499
Huawei Nexus 6P 128 GB - $599

 

[TheKrell]

Yup. My wife sprung for the 16GB 5X and so far she loves it. She had a regular ol' Nexus 5 beforehand.

 

[EarDemon]

Well my frustrations continue to mount.

Now when I connect the phone to a PC via USB, and enable USB File Transfer on the phone, I see absolutely nothing in the DCIM folder, and just a .index file in the Ringtones folder. If I use the ES File Explorer app on my phone all the contents are there, but I can't see them in Windows Explorer. I was able to see them in the past, since that's how I copied all of my photos from my old phone to the Nexus and how I brought over my self made ringtones. I'm showing all files and even searching in the root of the Nexus 6P for a specific name of an Image in DCIM/Camera yields nothing.

I wonder if the update to 6.0.1 had something to do with it. Now how am I supposed to get pictures off of my phone without emailing them to myself or uploading to some cloud crap and redownloading them, which I refuse to do.

 

[Rey]

I'm on 6.0.1 and don't have any of these issues. Sorry.

 

[EarDemon]

I was going to do a master reset on my phone but am having two problems. First, I would like to get the pictures I took over Christmas off of my phone and on to my PC. And second, I have some information I would like to take screenshots of, and while I can somewhat put up with having to attempt to take a dozen screens in order to get one, I cannot take a single screen cap that doesn't include the volume bar in the shot. This is with my case removed. This is just stupid. Back in Donut and Eclair when taking screen shots was not a native function, I had an easier time taking them by having an app run the background that would detect a certain type of wrist motion and take a screenshot.

I'd have to do this anyway. I need to root this phone, I cannot take those blasted on screen buttons anymore, I'm at my wits ends, I need them gone now. Apparently if you root you can make them disappear or auto hide or something. While the rooting instructions make zero sense to me, unlocking the bootloader I guess does a master reset on the phone. I don't remember that happening when I rooted my Evo and Evo 3D. As of last week I can longer get my Road Runner email on this phone using Outlook. I saw on XDA where someone else had the same problem. This phone is more frustrating then it's worth.

 

[Ronnie-]

Now how am I supposed to get pictures off of my phone without emailing them to myself or uploading to some cloud crap and redownloading them, which I refuse to do.

I know you do not want to, but using the cloud is actually pretty simple and very convenient. I back up every picture I take to onedrive, and it is automatically synced across my windows devices, or any device I have the onedrive app on. If I want to store it to a drive, it is pretty simple to do as well from the app or program. It saves a lot of storage on my phone as every so often I delete them from physical storage, and if I want to see them, I just open the onedrive app and there they are.